Around half of the members of the Israeli Knesset flew to Poland this week in a high-security operation to honour Shoah victims on Holocaust Memorial Day.

World leaders from the UK, US and Europe joined the 54 MKs for a ceremony at Auschwitz-Birkenau, on the 69th anniversary of its liberation.

They toured the death camp, walked past cases containing 7,000 kilograms of human hair, 40,000 pairs of shoes and 12,000 glasses — remnants of the 1.1 million killed at the camp, of which 90 per cent were Jews.

For some of the Israelis, the experience reinforced a tough message.

Israeli Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, of the right-wing Habayit Hayehudi party, said: “The lesson is this: only Israel will defend Jews. We can never and we will never, rely on anyone else.

“One bomb [from the Allies] would have stopped the murder machine, and yet no one bombed.”

Likud MK Danny Danon, the deputy minister of defence, echoed the sentiment. “There are still people plotting against the Jews. But with a Jewish state, they can’t do [us harm].”

But Stirling MP Anne McGuire, one of three British parliamentarians on the visit, said UK leaders have a “special responsibility” to prevent another Holocaust.

Recognising rising levels of UK antisemitism, the Labour Friends of Israel chair urged leaders to “challenge fascism and its manifestations”.

Conservative MP for Hendon Matthew Offord backed calls to stop “political hatred and violence” in the UK. He said education was needed to stop Holocaust denial.

“We need to ensure that people aren’t able to make claims that are not true,” he said.

Lord Howard, whose grandmother died in Auschwitz, said the visit was “emotional”.

Former British Forces commander Colonel Richard Kemp attended at the invitation of Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, who was sitting shivah for his wife Tatiana who had died last Thursday.

He noted that Britons were the largest group, after Poles, to visit Auschwitz last year. “It is important that British people pay tribute to the millions of Jews slaughtered in the war,” he said.

Around 1,000 people attended the interfaith memorial service, including Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel David Lau, who carried a Sefer Torah to the ceremony, which was organised by charity From The Depths.

Chazan Chaim Adler, of the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem, sang the El malei rachamim memorial prayer for the dead.

But British Professor Jonathan Webber, a founding member of the International Auschwitz council, was “offended” by the omission of non-Jewish victims from the prayer.

“They’ve made a terrible blunder,” he said. “They’ve mentioned the six million Jews, but not the goyim. It doesn’t reflect well on us.”

Security at the event was tight after far-right Polish groups campaigned to stop the event. The attempted ban came after a Warsaw University survey found that two-thirds of Poles believe in the global Jewish banker conspiracy.

But Rabbi Avi Baumol, rabbinic representative to the Chief Rabbi of Poland in Krakow, said there “is still antisemitism here, but there’s also philosemitism. My experience over the past five months has been extremely positive. I walk with my kippah and people say ‘shalom’.”

Another coach finally arrived over an hour later to take the remaining members of the delegation — around 20 people — back to their hotel in Krakow city centre.

Later, part of the Israeli delegation, including Economy Minister Naftali Bennett and MK Ayelet Shaked, was delayed at Krakow Military Airport for over seven hours after their plane developed technical problems.